


Swallowed by the Sea

by Sparklesthedark



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 10:21:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2847548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sparklesthedark/pseuds/Sparklesthedark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[AU] Daryl falls in love with the girl playing the ivory keys in the piano lounge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Swallowed by the Sea

**Author's Note:**

> Secret Santa gift for Bethylgrixon on tumblr! I hope you like it :)
> 
> Thanks to Abby for editing!

Her music makes her beautiful.  He hasn’t heard someone play this well in years. His taste is nothing like the classical notes of Debussy or the whimsical pop-turned-piano tunes she prefers, but he's been somehow subconsciously aching for the soul-revival her fingers across the ivories give him.  The usual Motörhead and Thin Lizzy had become harsh and disruptive even in his own truck.

No, ever since he discovered her (over a month ago), he’s been enthralled with her music, with _her_.

Today she sits on the cushioned piano chair, her blue eyes swallowing the keys she strokes so gently, playing a piece he’s heard her play before.  She’s got pale skin visible underneath the white cotton of the thin t-shirt, her blonde hair tumbling down her shoulders. He eyes her as he sweeps the floor.  Daryl has fought with himself for weeks about just stopping his daily duties and parking his butt in the couch, to listen to her play.

To listen to _Beth_ play.

He knows her name because two weeks ago an obnoxious brunette had come sprinting into the study lounge yelling “Beth!  BETH! BETH!”  The quiet blonde girl had looked up from her playing, stopping (to Daryl’s dismay) to give her full attention to the other girl.  His shift had ended then, and he left to put the supplies back in the closet, to go home to his useless brother and try and forget a stupid college girl.

His mind is enthralled with her, won’t let her go.  She is fascinating.  The University is wild and crazy, but there's little of that school-girl innocence.  He doesn’t see it in anyone else; no one's face is quite so virtuous any longer, at least at his age.  For people like Daryl Dixon, the world was frowns and brokenness and there would never be room for anything else.

Of course, Beth had no reason not to smile.  To Daryl, she seemed to be well-off and loved by everyone, to be perfect and young in every way.  Hate and contempt could not crawl their way into her heart if it tried.  He discovers all of this the night he has his first conversation with her.  Daryl had gone home from his shift that Friday to find that he had left his wallet somewhere in the residence hall that was his duty to maintain.  When he arrived back upwards of ten o’clock that evening, he heard the familiar sounds of her playing.

They end up searching for his wallet together after she asks why he’s there.  And even after it had been found (under the couch he had moved earlier to vacuum), she sits across from him at one of the study tables, her chin propped up on her two hands, her blue eyes luminous and breathtaking in the bad light of the floor lamp.  Daryl doesn't know why she's lingering—he's not very nice, he doesn't smile, doesn't fit the mold of late-night study rendezvous.  She's beautiful, and he's unsure of what to do with his hands or his arms or his words.

He’s shocked to find out that she’s a rising junior, twenty years old, straight out of peach-farm Georgia.  He recognized her hometown; he’d been there once or twice on shady business with Merle.  But he didn’t tell her that.  He didn’t tell her anything, really.  He mostly just listened to her talk.  She was studying music education and played the piano as a hobby.  Her friends were all psych majors who spent their free nights at a fraternity house they were welcome at.

When the grandfather clock chimes eleven, he looks at her, “Why are you in the study lounge on a Friday night girl?”

“What else would I be doin’?” she asks sweetly, her eyebrows going up and her tone carrying a girlish giggle that would have been annoying on someone if she wasn’t who she was.

“I dunno,” he mutters.

He feels guilty when she speaks again.  He knows now that their age gap is a little more than ten years, and he ought to go home and wait for Merle to stumble in, ready to be taken care of.  Something about her voice just keeps him glued to his seat, like he is waiting for her to tell him a secret, like she has him baited.  Then the line snapped.

The door to the lounge squeaked open; two girls dressed in evening-clothes are supporting the brunette Daryl recognized as the one who came in screaming Beth’s name a few weeks ago.  The brunette girl is unable to stand, demeanor that indicated she had had too much to drink.  Beth immediately stands up to help her friend.

“Sorry about this,” one of the two supporting Beth’s friend says.  “She had a bit too much at the party.”

Beth doesn’t say anything, instead going to support her friend by herself.

“Thanks for bringing her back,” Beth says.  And then the girls disappear, leaving Beth with her very drunk friend.  It’s clear to Daryl that she won’t be able to carry the girl, and there was no way that the brunette is going to be able to get upstairs by herself.

“Here,” Daryl says softly, picking the drunk girl up, “let me help.”

Beth nods in gratitude as she leads the way to the lone stairwell in the all-girls residence hall.

“Some friends you got,” Daryl mutters as they climb to the fifth floor.

Beth shrugs, and then they arrived at her door _567_.  Daryl sets down the drunk girl and Beth takes ahold her.  She smiles at Daryl.

“Thank you,” she whispers.

Then she goes inside and Daryl stands outside, staring at those numbers for a long time.

 

"Did you forget your wallet again?" she accuses after a few minutes.  He had walked in mid-tune, and sat down on one of the chairs.  He had brought nothing with him, still in his janitorial uniform.  His shift had ended three hours ago, yet he had found himself sitting in one of the local bars downtown all alone, waiting.

He can’t explain why he’s back again, why he can’t stay away from this girl.  She’s staring at him, her blue eyes peering into his soul.  He should feel uncomfortable.  He's been back in the lounge every day; students are in there studying as he wipes down shelves and the clock.  Sometimes she is in there, playing, sometimes she’s not.  He idly wonders where she is when she is not playing, because it seems as if her natural state is to be musically virtuoso.

"Nah," he shrugs after a while.

She smiles, something that makes a weird _thump thump thump_ echo in his ears, and goes back to playing.  He sits and listens.

 

Days later, he sees her again, sitting at that piano.

She turns her head to the side, a look of pure innocence piercing his heart. "So..." she trails off, looking at him.  He doesn’t even really have a good reason to be here, _to see you_ , he could say.  But that sounds cheesy and if there is one thing Daryl Dixon isn’t, it’s that.

"What's your name?" she asks in place of the question she didn’t ask.  "You never said."

“Daryl,” he tells her.  “Daryl Dixon.”

“Pleasure to meet ya, Mr. Dixon,” she smiles, bringing her hand out to shake his.  He hesitates (human contact always bothered him).  She takes his hand and shakes it for him, and then she lets go before he can comprehend what she has done.

They kill the hour with conversation, mostly she talks, but he is eager to listen.  Home is almost four hours away for her, in Senoia.  She has a horse at home named Nelly.  She’s got a sister, Maggie, and her dad.  Her brother and mother died in a horrible accident (he doesn’t tell her about his mother, can’t bring himself to make her feel pity for him).  She’s still bright and smiley, even though she has seen pain.

Daryl recognizes the scars on her wrists, but he doesn’t say anything (he does think how they could rival his own).  He is not that surprised someone like Beth does not cover them up.  She wears them as badges of honor, a signal to outsiders that she is no stranger to pain and will not take bullshit from anyone.  If she caught him eying the scars, she doesn’t mention it.

He doesn’t say anything either.

Eventually her friends come to get her, drunk and happy from their evening out.  She smiles and stands to go with them.  They tell her they will be in so-and-so’s room, and leave without making sure she’s following them.

Beth turns on her heel before she slides out the door and kisses Daryl on the cheek.  It’s innocent, but he feels the burning intent behind it.  “Instead of sitting in the study lounge, how about we go to the beach next week?”

“It’s about to be November,” he tells her, trying to find reason to not go on what sounds like a date because this girl is in college and he is old and a nobody and someday she will be _somebody._

“So wear a jacket,” she smiles, her teeth glowing white.

 

For the next few weeks, at the end of every Friday, they go to the beach.   It’s only a ten minute walk from campus.  Sometimes she arrives to find him already there, other times he ends his shift early and waits for her on the pier.  While it was still decently warm, they sat in the sand, close enough to feel the tide.  Now it was near freezing during the evening and they sat on the dune.

"What’ll you do when I leave for break?" she teases, running her hands through the grainy sand.

"Probably take care of Merle," Daryl says before he can stop himself.  Then he goes still because it’s the first time he’s ever mentioned his brother to her, to anyone, in this new place.

"Is he your family?"

He hesitates, but then decidedly nods.  “Brother.”  It comes out gruffly.  Like he’s choking.  And he hopes she doesn’t notice but he knows she does and it doesn’t bother him as much as he thought it would.  “He…he ran into some trouble, before,” he says.  She nods, understanding what was unsaid because she just gets it.  That’s one of the many wonderful things about Beth that he’s discovered in the last few months.  She’s thoughtful and intelligent, but she never oversteps her bounds.  She would never pry if she knew he wasn’t comfortable in telling.

Kind of scares him a little, that he’s become so vulnerable with someone.

“So that’s why you’re _here_ ,” she whispers.

“Just gotta lay low for a while,” Daryl explains, “’til Merle says we’re clear.”

“And how long will that be?” she asks, biting her lip.

Daryl found an unfamiliar tug in his stomach that wasn’t nausea but nowhere near close to pain.  “Dunno,” he shrugs.  “Might come home tonight and leave, might be another year.”

Beth remains expressionless, but he sees _something_ in her eyes.  They don’t talk much the rest of the time.  They just sit and stare at the sky, laden with thick overcast and a full moon that refused to be blocked by clouds.  When Beth stands to leave (she always left first), her sand-buried foot caused her to fall forward, where Daryl reaches out his arms, stabilizing her.

She takes the opportunity to kiss him quickly on the lips.  Daryl reacts only after she has high-tailed away, and he watches her fleeing form retreat back to campus.  He sits back down on the dune, confused and unsure.  When Beth had arrived this evening he had been set on enjoying every moment because she left for Thanksgiving break the next day, and he would not see her for two weeks.

Suddenly he was glad to have that distance between them.

 

He doesn’t go back to the beach.  Even after he knows break is over, and she’s probably sitting there waiting for him.  He avoids the piano lounge, too.  Even when he hears her playing, he fights it.  Waits until the silence surrounds him and he knows she’s gone.  It was better this way.

He should have never have let her spend so much time with him to begin with.  It was getting out of hand, the way she had kissed him (had that actually even happened?), and he had to stop it.  For now, he was content to sit in his truck, on break, smoking and listening to the radio.

Until she knocks on the window, scaring him half-way to Atlanta.

“ _Beth_ ,” he chokes out, “what the hell?”

“You never came back,” she says softly.  Her eyes reflect hurt and sadness, but it is overshadowed by the anger he sees.  He’s stared down the barrel of a pistol, been so beat in a fight he’s collapsed, but he’s never, _never_ been this scared in his entire life.

He doesn’t even know what to say.

Which is good because she seems like she does.

“I know I’m not what you’re used to,” she says, “I know you look at me and you don’t know what to think because I’m younger but it doesn’t matter.”  She holds his gaze and he can’t look away.

“You can do better,” he implores her.  “You don’t want me.”

“Yes I do!” she cries.  “And you want me too,” she hisses, stepping closer to the window, her peppermint breath making him twist inside his uniform.  “Stop denying it.”

Part of him wants her now, to kiss her like he should have on the beach a few weeks ago.  The sane part of him roars inside that this is a bad idea, that she is too young and innocent to be touched by him, damaged and rotten.  She’s barely twenty-one, an age that doesn’t like to let go.  It’s easier for her to walk away angry than to be hurt. 

His brother mocks him, tells him to take the girl for the sake of having her; but Daryl shakes that off immediately because he knows better.  He’s not Merle. But he looks at Beth again and sees the way her eyes shine—deep and beautiful and maybe she’s already half in-love with him.  Maybe he couldn’t stop this even if he tried.

He doesn’t know what to think, but he’s not going to be able to make a decision because her hands are brushing against his arm, and he can smell the peppermint on her breath, taste the sweetness of her lips before she even kisses him.  He doesn’t lean in, but Beth Greene does, and she makes the decision for both of them.

It’s wonderful and eventually he opens the door to let her into the truck and she straddles his lap.  They kiss to Christmas Carols on the holiday station he had been dialed into before she had scared the hell out of him.  Her hands are cold and soft on his face, and he takes them off and breathes warmly onto them, staring into her eyes.

“Knew I wasn’t going crazy,” she hums, kissing his face.

“Just tryin’ to do the proper thing,” he tells her, gripping her hips a little too hard to be considered ‘proper.’

She just laughs.  “Keep tellin’ yourself that, Daryl.”


End file.
